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Public acceptability is a major concern for road pricing schemes in Western countries but has not yet been sufficiently studied in the context of Chinese cities, a number of which are considering the introduction of such travel constraint measures. This study explores factors influencing public acceptability of a proposed congestion charge in the City of Beijing. In so doing, the study focuses on understanding the appropriateness of Western frameworks for assessing public acceptability in the Chinese context. Through literature review and focus groups a survey to test different public acceptability constructs was developed (N = 1104). A Structural Equation Model was used to analyze relationships that exist among the different aspects of public acceptability. The results demonstrate that public acceptability is dominantly influenced by the level of trust toward the Government and experts. Various determinants in the Western context, such as access to information and perceived effectiveness were not found to have a significant impact on public acceptability. The results imply that public acceptability of congestion charging in the Chinese context has a stronger resonance with wider social issues such as equity than more specific transport problems such as congestion. As such, attempting to present evidence on the anticipated effectiveness of the policy in alleviating congestion and smog may not make the policy more acceptable to the public. The overall inference of the study is that contextual factors are more important than has been previously considered within public acceptability studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pulmonary thromboembolism (PTE) is a fatal clinical syndrome that usually occurs in elderly individuals. The present study aimed to identify functional and key genes involved in the early diagnosis of PTE using bioinformatics analysis. The GSE84738 dataset was retrieved from the Gene Expression Omnibus database. Gene Ontology and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes pathway enrichment analyses were subsequently performed. In addition, Cytoscape software v.3.7.2 was used to construct a protein-protein interaction (PPI) network. Serum samples from patients with PTE and healthy individuals were collected and the expression levels of Toll-like receptor (TLR)4, TLR2, IL-1β, JUN, prostaglandin-endoperoxide synthase 2 (PTGS2), osteopontin (SPP1) and endothelin-1 (ET-1) were analyzed by reverse transcription-quantitative PCR. A total of 160 upregulated and 159 downregulated differentially expressed genes were identified between patients with PTE and healthy individuals. TNF, IL-1β, JUN, TLR4, PTGS2, vascular cell adhesion molecule 1, SPP1, ryanodine receptor 2, TLR2 and ET-1 were considered as hub genes, which are defined as the genes with the highest degree of interaction in the enrichment and PPI network analyses. The top 10 common genes with the highest degree in the PPI network and the top 10 genes in modules 1 and 2 were TLR4, TLR2, IL-1β, JUN, PTGS2, SPP1 and ET-1. Taken together, the present study suggested that TLR4, TLR2, IL-1β and SPP1 were enriched in patients with PTE, thus providing novel potential biomarkers for the diagnosis of PTE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Knowing how workers return to work is a key policymaking issue for economic recovery in the post-COVID-19 era. This paper uses country-wide time-series mobile phone big data (comparing monthly and annual figures), obtained between February 2019 and October 2019 and between February 2020 and October 2020, to discover the spatial patterns of rural migrant workers' (RMWs') return to work in China's three urban agglomerations (UAs): the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Region, the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta. Spatial patterns of RMWs' return to work and how these patterns vary with location, city level and human attribute were investigated using the fine-scale social sensing related to post-pandemic human mobility. The results confirmed the multidimensional spatiotemporal differentiations, interaction effects between variable pairs and effects of the actual situation on the changing patterns of RMWs' return to work. The spatial patterns of RMWs' return to work in China's major three UAs can be regarded as a comprehensive and complex interaction result accompanying the nationwide population redistribution, which was affected by various hidden factors. Our findings provide crucial implications and suggestions for data-informed policy decisions for a harmonious society in the post-COVID-19 era., Competing Interests: The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article., (© The Author(s) 2022.)